My gaming year in review - TTRPGs
It's that time of the year I guess, let's talk about the games I've been playing.
Vaesen
I started the year doing a monster-of-the-week style game with Vaesen in the D&D table in which I was previously a player. I'm not really a rules-heavy kind of person, but Vaesen seemed lighter than D&D (it is, but not enough), I already had the book (it is absurdly pretty) and my players seemed very enthusiastic about it (they noticed how pretty the book was, I guess).
I think Vaesen has some really cool stuff and vibes going for it, but it got tiring for me after a few sessions. Setting up the mysteries instead of improvising and having to deal with NPCs and monsters having stats and skills doesn't really match my GMing style and I learned my lesson.
I will say that I thought it was really interesting that players in this game ended up being something more akin of mediators instead of actual monster hunters. Despite the game having all the maximalist combat rules that I dislike, they really do help showing players how powerless they are.
Mythic Bastionland
The table that I was previously GMing Blades in the Dark switched to a Mythic Bastionland game in which I became a player. Mythic Bastionland is amazing, I love doing knightly things and traveling around and I really fucking love having a concise character sheet that still has some funny abilities in it.
Our GM had never run an Odd-like before (and this one has a few more procedures), so we're all learning as we go. I was itching to play this game and now that I did, I'm also itching to run it. I've also been concocting a weirdish-westish homebrew for it, maybe using some stuff from We Deal In Lead and highly inspired by the vibes from West of Dead.
We still have another session before the year ends, which is neat.
His Majesty The Worm
I started playing in a HMTW table at the end of the year, thanks to a friend who really likes tarot cards and was GMing Blades for me some time ago.
Anyhoo, what an interesting game! I feel like it stands on the "too many mechanics for me to GM while having an acceptable amount as a player" category, which might also have Vaesen in it, now that I think about it. I thought I would be sad due to the lack of math rocks, but having the tarot deck in the middle of the table is actually quite the vibe.
We didn't play a lot yet, but I will say the combat is tactically a lot more interesting than all the other games that still insist on the silly grid wargame simulation thing.
DURF
I ran a DURF one-shot for a friend from my D&D/Vaesen table and his partner that wanted to learn more about ttrpgs. I bought Lair of the Gobbler, which was on my wishlist for a while, and drafted up some human-dwarf-elf-halfling stuff to choose to give them the D&D vibe. My partner also decided to join the game so we ended up with a happy little party of three halflings fighting the biggest fucking frog they've ever seen.
The game feels great, but I'm not actually sure how well it went. We had fun, but I feel like I overrelied on mechanics even in such a rules-lite game. Also, it was quite lethal and even with my forewarning of this, not all new players are happy when their jolly halfling gets squished by a huge ass frog. When introducing people to rpgs from now on, I'll probably just FKR it up like in the not-so-good old high-school days: roll a d20, high numbers are good, low numbers are bad, everything else is in the fiction.1
Heart: The City Beneath
SHIT, I FORGOT HEART!2 A friend started a monthly game of Heart: The City Beneath and I am finally able to play the fucked-up body-horror gender-weird self-surgeon that D&D failed to deliver me years ago (yes, I am playing as a Witch).
I already talked a bit about Heart's system in the past, so I'll just add here how I love the aesthetics and how they really make the dungeon delving experience unique. I'm not going to list everything that makes the setting work so well, but just skim through the book if you have the chance and you'll get it immediately. The flesh caves, the you-literally-are-what-you-eat hunters, the hive-mind military, the scientists made up of literal hives... It's been great.
Tunnel Goons
Finally, I ran The Sky Blind Spire using Tunnel Goons for my partner, some friends and a friend of theirs who had only ever DMed D&D their whole life and thought 5e was "actually a very simple game". Which is like, totally fine, people have different experiences and all - but I'm a little bitch and to prove a point simply decided I would use an actual "actually a very simple game" to have a one-shot ready in minutes. And I did.
The dungeon is honestly a lot of fun and despite the focus on the crawling, Tunnel Goons' lovely lifepath chargen led to some great character moments too. Amazing how much fun two one-pagers can squeeze out of a Sunday afternoon.
Now what?
I don't know, I'd like to try running Mythic Bastionland next year and I'm also reading Teeth and Ultraviolet Grasslands 2e so getting those going would also be neat. Oh, and here's to hoping all the current games don't implode due to schedulling issues!
anb
Links: actually in the text this time, there are too many of them.
